Security Politics and Climate Change the new security dilemma

Security Politics and Climate Change: the new security dilemma HUGH C.. Security Politics and Climate Change: the new security dilemmaIntroduction In both theory and practice there are o

Security Politics and Climate Change:

the new security dilemma

HUGH C DYER

for Olaf Corry & Hayley Stevenson,

International Relations and the Earth

(Chapter 10, revised draft, 2 September 2015)

CONTACTS

Dr H.C Dyer

School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS)

University of Leeds LS2 9JT U.K

e-mail: h.c.dyer@leeds.ac.uk

tel: 44 113 343-6840

Security Politics and Climate Change: the new security dilemma

Introduction

In both theory and practice there are obvious tensions betweenclimate security and national economic security, which is perhapsbroadly understood but not readily admitted into policy debates Thepolitical tension derives from significant challenges in meeting suchcompeting goals, though naturally there is great interest in ‘win-win’policies that appear to meet both goals, and particularly if they do

so without directly challenging existing practices and ‘business asusual’ A deeper source of tension lies in the various understandings

of security, and their inevitably intimate relationships to the naturalenvironment The purpose here is to provide clarity to thesedimensions of 'security' policy by analysis of the key terms, and totest them in relation to a more 'eco-logical security' perspective Tothis end, the chapter examines the conceptual difficulties ofcapturing the relevant issues in a ‘security’ framework, reviews andreflects on literature around the subject of environmental securityover the last twenty years, and explores the policy discourses inwhich these security terms are deployed It offers a criticalassessment of the structural and strategic assumptions andimplications of the relationship between climate security and otherpriorities, which demands that they be treated as collectivestrategic goals but does not ensure that they are complementary asopposed to contradictory pursuits, nor that resulting policy isinternally coherent The discussion underwrites further assessment

of the policy positions of actors with critical roles in setting theglobal agenda, where incoherence and competing political prioritiesundermine coordinated, consistent policy The variations in climatesecurity discourses further exacerbates the implementation ofconcrete policy (von Lucke, Wellmann and Diez 2014) The context is

thus a new form of security dilemma, which like the classicalformulation tells us that the pursuit of any single object of security is

‘an effort which proves self-defeating because complete securityremains ultimately unobtainable’ (Herz 1959: 231) This will point tothe imminent potential of novel security concerns to transforminternational politics, which may be better understood from anecological perspective on the political challenges of achieving globaljustice It will also indicate the emerging political opportunities thatthese challenges create

Determining the significance of climate security is difficult, partlybecause of the complexities of the subject matter, and also becausethe context of its significance is potentially very broad Whether thissignificance proves to be predominantly political, moral, economic

or social in the end is either difficult to judge or an unimportantdistinction (or both), depending perhaps on the perspectives ofpolitics, ethics, economics or sociology What does seem rather

more clear is that in the end this is about ‘us’ and our future (including future generations of us), among all the other possible

constructions of agency, political and economic actors, or socialformations Whatever the complications of distinguishing betweenthe individual and the collective in these contexts, there doesn’t

seem much room for thinking in terms of ‘them’ since all of us are

implicated in the play of these issues This suggests structuralchange of the sort that Linklater argues is driven by globalizationtowards greater cosmopolitanism (Linklater 1998), though perhapsconditioned by Rengger’s observation that it requires ‘acommitment to the inevitably plural, contextual sense of the moraluniverse’ (Rengger 1998: 631-632) Thus, while this new ‘security’term reflects currently visible climate impacts, its significance runsdeeper than is suggested by our normal immediate reactions toinsecurity The current system of policy-making isn't working well, tosay the least, and climate change and consequent social disruptionaren't going away Certainly there’s some cause for insecurity in

that realisation, but also some motivation for consideringfundamental change

The Political Challenge of 'Climate Security' – a review

‘Security’, for climate as for other issues, must mean something likestability and absence of danger At a human level, and thence at amore mediated political level, the source of this meaning is a feltsense of insecurity What conditions are to be stabilized and what orwho is endangered are, of course, the assumptions underlying anynotion of security Here, the assumptions seem to be that climatechange should be stabilized, and that rapid change endangerseverything from individual livelihoods to the global politicaleconomy While these assumptions are reasonable in the context of

‘business as usual’ policy, the overall policy objective of maintaining

the status quo is probably unreasonable given the nature of the

challenges, if evading climate impacts in the short term amounts to

a ‘band-aid’ solution to a larger structural problem More criticalaspects of public discourse reflect fears, as well as hopes, asdisruptions create political opportunities (Klein 2011)

Writing in Vogler and Imber’s ‘The Environment and InternationalRelations’ twenty years ago (Dyer 1996), I challenged theessentially Realist conceptions of security of the time, and from anormative theoretical perspective, criticised attempts to encompassenvironmental issues within existing national security agenda (beinginfluenced in this, like others, by Deudney 1990) I explored theimplications of taking environmental security to be a universalvalue This was largely addressed to the disciplinary debates ofinternational relations, in which normative theory is particularlyrelevant to issues of global environmental change because of thetensions revealed in the dichotomy between communitarian andcosmopolitan traditions of thought The argument then thatenvironmental security and national security are alternative values

arising in the context of alternative world-views remains relevant.What was still novel at the time was an emerging awareness ofenvironmental issues being a challenge to traditional meanings ofpolitical concepts, including justice, equity and development alongwith the obvious need to preserve a sustainable foundation for life

on earth – and of course in that broader context, ‘security’ Fiveyears later I asked whether environmental concerns, and theconsiderable volume of publication and public debate about these,had transformed institutional thought and practice in the field ofinternational relations I argued that the idea of environmentalsecurity in particular justified the incorporation of the key terms andperspectives of environmental studies into the study of internationalrelations (Dyer 2001)

Shortly thereafter a leading scholar of environmental security,Simon Dalby, revealed the obscuring manufactured discoursesaround insecurity arising from unexamined notions of bothenvironment and security, noting the limited imagination of politicalpossibilities and assumptions about the possibility (and desirability)

of achieving security through a controlling technologicalmanagement (Dalby 2002: 146) This also challenged Realistassumptions about achieving spatial security, often throughimperialist intervention, (Dalby 2002: 155) and by extensioncontrolling the environment through a state-centric securityapparatus (Dalby 2002: 293-4) All of this raised broader issuesabout our understanding of complex environment-society relations.Dalby later argued for understanding security ecologically, given theextent of environmental change arising from economic globalization(Dalby 2009) This requires reframing conventional notions ofinternational security to incorporate the deeply interconnectedconcepts of environmental and human security, and integratingdiverse disciplinary perspectives on security within a more holisticecological as opposed to state-centric context Overcomingdisciplinary distinctions, such as between earth system sciences and

social sciences, raises challenging questions about the governability

of earth systems (Biermann et al 2012; Nilsson and Persson 2012;Corry and Jørgensen 2015)

Floyd and Matthew’s comprehensive overview of environmentalsecurity studies notes that the meaning of environmental security iscontested, and either narrow or broad or rejected (Floyd andMatthew 2013: 279) Floyd argues against a simplisticenvironmental scarcity and conflict perspective, given thesignificance of climate, demography, and sustainability, and defendscritical approaches (Floyd and Matthew 2013: 292) She concludesthat while there is a clear case for securing the human environment,

‘environmental security’ is a contested concept imbued with culturalvalues, that the language of security is open to abuse; this leads tosupport for Dalby’s view that achieving security will requiresignificant change in socio-economic practices (Floyd and Matthew2013: 290) Floyd gives particular attention to critical and ethicalperspectives on the links between climate and security (inevitablyboth complex and potentially problematic), given that this maybecome the dominant issue for environmental security studiesbecause of ‘…the new focus, the nexus between ‘climate and

‘security’…’ (Floyd and Matthew 2013: 280)

The discourse around the key security terms offers insight into thenature of the ‘political community’ of climate These new termsinvoke consideration of a global political community in whichindividual responsibility is an important consideration, but moreradically, they potentially extend the scope of political communitybeyond the current generation (in respect of intergenerationalequity and futurity) and beyond the human agent (in respect ofecological concern) While the issue area climate has receivedindividual attention, the notion of 'security' attached to it isrelatively novel and introduces a different intellectual and policyorientation which has not yet been thoroughly explored Beyond thisnovelty is the connection – often tension – between climate and

other issues, which has also been raised, but not seriouslyconfronted In many instances this connection allows climate to bepresented as a security issue simply in terms of being a threat or

conflict multiplier (Brzoska 2014) – if climate change isn’t the

proximal cause of conflict, existing social and political tensions caneasily be exacerbated by climate impacts (which of course remain asource of threat to livelihoods independent of conflict)

What is largely missing is consideration of the implications of theterminology, the hidden tension behind policy, or the near absentdiscussion of inevitable reductions in consumptive lifestyleexpectations and declining or altered economic growth This callsattention to both contradictory and complementary aspects ofclimate 'security' and other strategic goals, and the need forcoherent policy across these areas It raises a challenge to addressthe (generally unspoken) requirements to make sacrifices in terms

of consumption and/or to absorb costs in terms of adaptation andmitigation, if objectives are to be pursued in a coordinated mannerand within a relevant timescale If ‘security’ is an important aspect

of climate policy, the term ‘climate security’ has not been clearlydefined, which makes it both hard to measure and difficult tobalance against other policy goals

The ‘security’ content of the debates can, of course, be accessedfrom the traditional field of military-political security such that theunderlying characteristics of climate issues are stripped down topotential consequences in terms of conflict For example, aconventional political-military strategic orientation which continues

to dominate debates about security, and so illustrates commonlyheld conceptions of the nature of the issue and implied responses to

it The vulnerabilities identified in this perspective include lines ofcommunication and transportation Perhaps ironically, concernsabout our impact on the climate now include concerns about theimpact of environmental change on well-supported energyinfrastructures (Paskal 2009) This suggests a definition of climate

security as avoidance of direct physical harm, but also thepossibility of more specific definitions in terms of the social-economic consequences of failure in this regard, or even a moreextensive notion of existential security regardless of the type orsource of threat.

Thus, climate security can be couched either in military securityterms, with the attendant risk calculus (Briggs 2012), or morecomprehensively viewed in terms of human security (Barnett andAdger 2007) This latter perspective would bring climate securityinto a wider frame of reference which considers social and economicchange, and the political challenge of governing such processes Itwould also cast doubt on a climate security perspective that focuses

on dealing only with the aftermath of climate change, throughenforced adaptation or somewhat bizarre proposals to geo-engineerthe climate, rather than preventing catastrophic climate change inthe first place No military security strategy would ignore preventiveaction in favour of post-conflict remedial action, even if that provesnecessary in the event So it is that traditional security perspectiveshave influenced thinking about environmental and climate security,and yet have been unable to take account of increasingly significantdemands for a broader ‘human security’, or to deal with criticalperspectives on securitization The danger is that a specific securitylogic may be imposed on environmental concerns such as climatechange which are not amenable to fixed spatial and temporalnotions of security, and require greater sensitivity to processes andpractices

Security concepts, and the issues to which they refer, tend tohinge on estimates of relative importance giving rise to ‘urgency’ or

‘emergency’ Of course, we might note that one person’s sense ofemergency is not always shared by others (consider the phrase ‘lack

of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mypart’), and that security concepts are influenced by perceptions andsocial constructions Yet, it is commonplace in organisational

contexts that the urgent displaces the important To some extentthis explains the political force of security concepts, as theyunderwrite claims for priority In this way, daily struggles forsurvival, or dignity, are not captured by an understanding ofsecurity which focuses on a single iteration of threat or cataclysm –though the prospect of a sudden fall from a position of relativeprivilege to a position of daily struggle might well be seen as anurgent security issue by the privileged What determines ‘security’ ishow, and by whom, issues are classified as either important orurgent, or both

It may well be that some basic value determines what is agreed

to be fundamentally important, in general principle (say, humanrights, whether political or economic), and yet this may be displaced

by claims for urgency in respect of less fundamental, less important,more specific and less principled concerns (say, security ofparticular governments or of economic privilege, etc) This is thesignificance of a shift to the ‘high politics’ of security As long aslimited and specific issues are classified as urgent (i.e as securityissues) long-term planning for important issues will beovershadowed and unattended Even when important issuesoccasionally surface in the urgent category in the form of natural,economic, or political disasters (a tsunami, typhoon or earthquake;famine; hyperinflation; general loss of liquidity in a ‘credit crunch’,

or a defaulting sovereign debtor; a Kosovo, Rwanda or Syria), thesemay be viewed as humanitarian issues or somehow ‘private’misfortunes which are exempt from normal national or internationalsecurity considerations It is quite possible that priority and urgency

is assigned on a completely ad hoc basis by the specific interestsimplicated in particular events, though this is still rare or diffuseenough to have little impact on general concepts of security (ifsomewhat more on national security doctrines) – or more to thepoint, states are still able to define any threat to their interests innational security terms The conventional connection between

national interest and power politics permits the characterisation ofsome important long-term issues such as nuclear proliferation asbeing security issues, but only to the extent that these arepresented as potentially becoming urgent, immediate threats Thepresentation is of the essence here – the ‘war on terror’ being aninstructive, and deeply flawed, case in point Etzioni (2007), for anexample of rethinking such issues, made a pragmaticcommunitarian case for ‘primacy of life’ as the focus and priority ofsecurity, and the priority of such security over democracy (in US

foreign policy), which is indeed hard to argue against in these

simple terms, though this doesn’t seem to address the conditions oflife beyond individual corporal security (sensible starting point that

it is) – it is ‘short on explicit discussion of sociological and politicaltheory’ (Kleykamp 2008) The most recent expression of US policyremains conventional in its characterisation of climate security:citing the 2015 National Security Strategy, the Department ofState's Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review refers toclimate change as an 'urgent and growing threat to our nationalsecurity, risking increased natural disasters, refugee flows, andconflicts over basic resources like food and water (State Department2015)

Certainly longer-term issues which few deny are important(environmental degradation, poverty and underdevelopment, lack ofhuman rights), and yet don’t attract a sense of urgency, will bemarginalised How then, does the novel concept of ‘climate security’find itself in the mix of security concepts? Indeed, is it to be takenseriously as a security concept? It is less likely to be taken seriously

in a conventional perspective, but more likely to be in a criticalperspective, and perhaps most likely from a radical perspective –but this leaves us to ponder its appearance in mainstreamdiscourse, along with its extension even to marginalized agrariancommunities (Dalby 2013: 124) It may be, if times are hard, thatpolitical-economic concerns about climate change have sufficient

urgency to qualify as security issues Perhaps it is only thecontribution to military and economic security concerns, as apotential conflict multiplier (Brzoska 2014), that attracts attention,though more radical insights are possible Consider the notion of

‘biopolitical security’ Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics can bemapped onto a critical, radical, notion of security as surveillance,control and thus management of the human species Dillon andLobo-Guerrero (2008), for example, note that the referent object ofthe biopolitics of security is ‘life’, which in turn is subject to moderndevelopments in respect of population demographics, molecularbiology, and digital virtual life The modern freedom-securityrelationship thus described raises Foucault’s spectre that it maythreaten itself, and ‘wager the life of the species on its own (bio)political strategies’ (Dillon and Lobo-Guerrero 2008: 265) Withoutnecessarily adopting such a radical critique, this new security termcan be tested in a more familiar context, and from a range ofperspectives (Oels 2012; von Lucke, Wellmann and Diez 2014) Howcan the concept of ‘climate security’ help us to appreciate longer-term issues of importance but as yet little apparent urgency? There

is something of a political struggle to define the level of urgency inthe human (economic, social, political) relationship to climatechange, with the only common ground being acceptance that wecurrently inhabit a carbon-intensive economy There is a degree oftechnological optimism in proposals for a ‘low carbon economy’ or'green economy' Because of our current political-economy thereare, of course, direct connections between resource issues(including food) and climate change which may trigger a broadersense of insecurity (that is, beyond trade and finance) about theglobal economy Furthermore, differences in scientific and culturalviews (Corry and Jørgensen 2015) and ‘ideational fragmentation’ inglobal security governance (Floyd 2015) undermine a commonunderstanding of climate security in this context

Here, the politics of these issues is situated in a 'security' context,and vice versa – the security terms are situated in a political, moral

or socio-economic context While there is likely to be some tensionbetween the intended meanings of the term ‘climate security’, andeven some incoherence, setting the issues in a 'security' contextmay amount to both cause and effect of an underlying political shift.The obligation to provide security – an obligation of politicalauthority, typically the state – is extended by ‘climate’ beyondtraditional response-to-threat categories and practices of states;consequently the capacity of states to deliver such security is alsoreduced, making room for other economic and social actors to exertinfluence As a commitment to climate issues develops andestablishes these as fundamental responsibilities of government andfundamental rights of individuals, a new social compact and a newpolitics emerges This recent security term can be seen as reflectingmore than a merely instrumental adjustment to practical challenges,within the framework of existing political conceptions andcommitments Rather, it indicates a deeper structural shift – even ifsuch a radical potential is not likely to be immediatelyacknowledged by the policy communities that espouse these terms.The nature of the issues seem to require rather too muchmanagement and governance, too much intervention (and at aglobal or transnational level), for them to be addressed simply bytinkering with a neoliberal economy - though just possibly theymight be by neoliberal institutions Industrial and developing statesare attempting to coordinate climate policy with a long-term view,however this demands giving attention to renewable energy sources

as well as their side effects The Global Commission on the Economyand Climate points to the need for 'long-term transition strategies'(New Climate Economy 2014) This suggests that providing climatesecurity will take on the proportions of large scale planning (if short

of ‘planned economies’ per se) of the type historically required to

address systemic crises

So it can be seen that appreciating the both the ecological andpolitical challenges of this new security concern will provide a betterunderstanding of their implications for the emerging structuralconditions of international politics.

The strategic context of climate security

‘Climate security’ has thus entered political discourse as a strategicgoal However, the corresponding political mechanisms are as yet atbest ill-formed, and perhaps incoherent, which suggests that theelement of sustainability has not yet been taken seriously So ratherthan indicating an act of ‘securitization’, the practical dilemmas inthe climate context suggest that this new form of ‘security’ onlyindicates some political commitment, reflecting a shift in priorities

To the extent that this reflects appreciation of unsustainableinequities and a shift toward more ecological values, it is a politicallysignificant turn; to the extent that it implicates ‘green’ economicpractices and political action, it is also a shift in structuralassumptions However, beyond the practical problem of coping withexisting structures, or changing them, is the deeper problem ofassuming foundational points of reference for any given structuralreality such that challenging or changing it is difficult or impossible

So there is an intellectual, or attitudinal, hurdle to leap at the outset– we’d have to accept that some deeply held assumptions aresimply no longer viable It is precisely to the point that climatesecurity dilemmas are seen as a challenge: traditional goals ofstates (health, wealth, security, etc) look different from a climatesecurity perspective, which could/should lead to change in politicaland economic practices Minteer (2005: 37) suggests that suchreconsiderations of the public interest is a necessary approach ‘inmaking connections between normative arguments andenvironmental policy discourse’ This reflects Hayward’s (1998)argument that environmental values are supported by enlightened

human interests, and furthermore that this link must exist topromote ecological goods, and that consequently there are seriousimplications in fully integrating environmental issues into ourdisciplinary concerns Hargrove (1989) makes an argument foranthropocentric, aesthetic sources of modern environmentalconcern by identifying attitudes that constrained (‘idealism’,

‘property rights’) and supported (scientific and aesthetic ideals) ourenvironmental perspectives If this doesn’t stretch us much beyondour current selves, there is no reason such anthropocentricorientations couldn’t be built upon as a foundation for morespecifically eco-centric perspectives, and certainly they areaccessible to current political discourse The key here is to identifythe underlying ‘security’ assumptions which thwart efforts to copewith climate issues coherently and effectively, and to advocatethose assumptions that serve genuine long-term human securityinterests (inevitably, in an ecological context) In this way can wetake stock of the existing structures that constrain and diminishhuman agency – while conceiving of those that would liberate andsecure it in sustainable ways As the reality of the situation slowlydawns on us, various political, moral, economic and social actors arebeginning to consider and test new strategies for coping – the realquestion is whether they are just playing to beat the clock, or ifthey’ve stopped long enough to reconsider the rules and purposes

of the strategic context in which they act

Structural Assumptions – a critique

‘Climate security’ plays to an existing set of assumptions aboutinternational politics being defined essentially in terms of acondition of security (or, more to the point, insecurity), andconsequent political relationships and political issues defined interms of security, which rest on a very limited conception of whatand who is to be secured It shares with other perspectives on

environmental security a vulnerability to limitations imposed bymilitary-political conceptualisations of security, or the subordination

of climate change and the environment in general to nationaleconomic security

The dominance of this underlying assumption about the essence

of world politics colours everything else – all kinds of relationshipsand issues, whether or not they seem to bear directly on a novelunderstanding of ‘security’ or to be consequent upon it It should benoted that a trend towards ‘securitization’ of issues normallythought about and acted upon in quite different terms brings with itboth dangers and opportunities (see the critiques by Wæver, Buzan,Williams, and others), with the referent object of 'climate security'being climate change or some strategically significant aspect of it(Buzan et al 1998) The double-edged sword of securitizing climateissues is forged from the element of urgency or emergency invoked

by the ‘security’ category This could justify either unwelcomeextraordinary action or complete inaction by states Yet it may alsoprovide welcome political focus, resources, and timelyimplementation of progressive climate policy However, thecomplexity and novelty of this combination of policy challengesrequires innovative interdisciplinary theoretical tools drawing onwork in both security studies and eco-political thought to develop amore holistic 'eco-logical security' perspective (for example, Piragesand Cousins 2005) Such a perspective would enhance prospects of

a viable global agenda for achieving climate security in acoordinated manner The concept of ‘ecological security’ is in widecirculation, particularly in the developing world, and even somegovernment departments use this title (e.g in the Ukraine), but itsmeaning is consequently diffuse This is either a problem in terms ofestablishing a shared political vision and agenda, or an opportunityfor cooperation through creativity and inventiveness Change itself

is not problematic, and even economic growth has always drawn onthe opportunities change brings in terms of new technologies, new

social practices, and new markets, which may indeed allow for

'Better Growth, Better Climate' (New Climate Economy 2014) So

the prospect of economic change should not be too troubling (andfor those disadvantaged by the current global economy, anequitable change would be welcome) However, if change is alright,economic growth may not be, or at least not in its current guise – sothis will require a change of perspective on ‘growth’ such that itdoes not signify ‘more of the same’ in terms of ever increasingconsumption of the earth’s resources and reductions in naturalcarrying capacities In the context of possibilities for de-materializing economic activity, Jacobs asks whether for ‘9 billionpeople aspiring to developed-world living standards, facing alreadysevere pressures on planetary resources, is there any rate of global

economic growth in practice which will nevertheless allow the

environment to be properly sustained over the long term?’ (Jacobs2012: 17) For example, growth in human opportunities anddiversity of practices would be welcome and economicallybeneficial, if these do not require fossil fuels and carbon sinks.Equally, it is not novel to speak of ‘economic security’ as a highpriority, but whatever that entails now it certainly won’t look thesame in the future, as every historical wave of economic change hastaught us Because the various kinds of security we seek, includingthat related to climate, are so clearly tied up with our unsustainableeconomic and political practices it requires little imagination tograsp that some form of sustainability is needed, and yet we lackclear strategic goals and mechanisms to achieve it

Thus climate issues might be conveniently linked to traditionalnotions of security where that suits current political purposes Thiswould of course ignore Deudney’s argument that organized violence

as a traditional threat and source of insecurity is not analyticallycomparable to environmental threats (Deudney 1990; Deudney1991) At the same time the economic threats (so now also

‘economic security’) are increasingly obvious, and as these are a